Haltung

The German word for the stance we take through our action and the integrity with which we practise.

A LIFE LIVED BY IT

what Haltung looks like when everything is at stake

Janusz Korczak was a Polish-Jewish doctor and pedagogue who ran two orphanages in Warsaw in the early twentieth century. He believed that children were entitled to be taken seriously and treated as equals, and this belief informed everything about how he ran his orphanages. The children in his care had a parliament and a court of their own. They were involved in the decisions that affected them.

In August 1942 the occupying Nazi forces deported the 200 children in his care to the extermination camp at Treblinka. German soldiers offered to spare Korczak himself. He declined to save his own life, choosing to walk with the children on their last march, so that they would not be alone.

That is Haltung. Not a stated value, but a value lived at the point where living it costs something – or everything.

‘Children are not the people of tomorrow, but are people of today. They are entitled to be taken seriously. They have a right to be treated by adults with respect, as equals. They should be allowed to grow into whoever they were meant to be – the unknown person inside each of them is the hope for the future.’

Janusz Korczak (1878–1942)

WHAT THE WORD MEANS

closer to ‘stance’ than to ‘attitude’

Haltung translates roughly as ethos, mindset or attitude, but none of those fully captures it. It is about our integrity – how far we guide our actions by what we say we believe. That means it is a matter of degree rather than a yes or no. Some of us live by our convictions more consistently than others.

Our Haltung is also deeply subjective, and it is not automatically something we would call good. Plenty of people hold beliefs that are obvious in what they say and how they treat others. The term Haltung therefore tells us something about the extent to which actions are aligned with beliefs – not whether someone’s Haltung is admirable. It’s not enough that we show our Haltung, but that we show the right kind of Haltung, one that reflects the values we hold dear across the human professions.

Haltung shows up everywhere, not just at work. Whether we take the bike instead of the car if we care about the climate. Whether we show kindness to strangers or respond with empathy where others might react with anger. And then, in practice, whether we genuinely treat the people we support as our equals and as precious human beings – or only say that we do. Most children know perfectly well whether an adult genuinely cares about them or is performing care. Our Haltung shines through in our relationships, and that in turn colours how people behave towards us.

THE TWO LIGHTHOUSES

Understanding and regarding

A social pedagogical Haltung rests on two things that pull in opposite directions: empathic understanding and regard for human dignity. The first requires our curiosity and eagerness to understand another person’s lived reality. It draws on empathy, dialogue and the belief that when we seek to understand someone else’s world, we gain important insights into what matters to them and how we can best support them.

Regarding means accepting the otherness in people – that they are different from us, have the right to different priorities and views, and to make decisions we might not agree with. We can never fully understand another person; we only ever recognise what we already know of ourselves in them. Accepting their strangeness means refusing to reduce them to what is already familiar.

These two create a helpful tension that enables us to navigate our practice – like two lighthouses offering direction when we chart our course. Haltung moves between them depending on what the situation requires. So while we aim to understand someone’s life world more fully, we also stay aware that part of them will always remain unknowable, and that this part deserves our regard.

WHY IT MATTERS

social pedagogy is not a method

Haltung is fundamental to social pedagogy because it puts authenticity and integrity at the centre. The course we chart between empathic understanding and regard needs to be genuine, needs to reflect what we truly hold dear. In our Haltung the professional and the personal are interwoven, which is why it cannot be adopted for a particular situation and then discarded. It is like a skin rather than a jacket.

This is why social pedagogy is not a method: it is less about what we do and much more about how we do it. Our Haltung shows in how we show up, from the words we use to what our body language communicates. How we speak with and about the people we support reveals whether we see whole human beings or nameless cases. If we want to convey the belief that each person is inherently rich and full of potential, our language and our actions have to line up.

In social pedagogical terms, Haltung is characterised by Carl Rogers’s core conditions: congruence, empathic understanding and unconditional positive regard. This requires dialogical engagement – meeting the other person as an equal and exploring something together without knowing where it will lead. That is how trust is built, and everything else follows from it.

‘If you want to be a pedagogue you have to learn to talk with children instead of to them. You have to learn to trust their capacities and possibilities.’

Janusz Korczak

PUTTING IT INTO PRACTICE

questions to sit with

What are three values you would say underpin your practice? Can you give practical examples of how they come out in what you do?
How would the people you support know that these values are important to you?
Think of someone you find difficult to support. What is it about them that you cannot empathically relate to – and what would regarding them properly ask of you?
Listen to how your team talks about people in handovers and meetings. What Haltung does that language reveal?